US must re­sist iso­la­tion, Obama says ahead of Europe trip

The United States must re­sist the “urge” of iso­la­tion­ism un­der new leader Don­ald Trump and work with al­lies, out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Barack Obama said Satur­day ahead of his last visit to Europe. “Our best chance for progress is to re­sist the urge to turn in­ward and in­stead rein­vig­o­rate our shared val­ues and work to­gether to en­sure that our po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic in­sti­tu­tions de­liver the se­cu­rity and pros­per­ity our peo­ple de­serve,” Obama told Greece’s Kathimerini news­pa­per.

Obama, who trav­els to Greece and Ger­many from Tues­day be­fore head­ing to Peru, fired re­peated mes­sages to­wards his in­com­ing suc­ces­sor Trump in the in­ter­view. “I be­lieve that Euro­pean in­te­gra­tion is one of the great­est po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic achieve­ments of mod­ern times, with ben­e­fits for EU mem­bers, the United States and the en­tire world,” Obama said. “Europe is our largest eco­nomic part­ner and we have a pro­found eco­nomic in­ter­est in a Europe that is sta­ble and grow­ing.”

Trump’s elec­tion this week, al­ready greeted by protests in some US cities, has thrown del­i­cately bal­anced geopol­i­tics into flux. Dur­ing the cam­paign, the brash Repub­li­can called into ques­tion long-stand­ing al­liances in­clud­ing NATO, global agree­ments on cli­mate and Iran’s nu­clear pro­gram, and ap­peared to side with Rus­sia on key pol­icy is­sues.

Across Amer­ica and the world, ques­tions are now be­ing raised about Trump’s re­spect for the rule of law and the sepa­ra­tion of pow­ers. “Pros­per­ity and growth thrive in trans­par­ent, pre­dictable, sta­ble en­vi­ron­ments where the rule of law pro­tects in­di­vid­ual rights and pro­vides lo­cal en­trepreneurs the con­fi­dence they need to grow and in­ter­na­tional busi­nesses the sense of se­cu­rity they need to in­vest,” Obama said.

In fight­ing the war in Syria, he noted, “we have to stay true to the val­ues and re­spect for hu­man dig­nity that are at the core of our demo­cratic, plu­ral­is­tic so­ci­eties.”— AFP